Sliding Down the Razorblades of Life
by Salomedancing
Summary: River Song's last term at University. A sequel to Visiting Time.
1. Gossip In the Library

**AN: My fics about the Master and River Song's started by chance and proved to be unexpectedly fun to write. So here is a third part, which will be longer and not so fun, though you will hopefully like it anyway. I have always felt that River Song, underneath her banter and flirting, is a deeply sad person. A person who gets cheated of, not only her childhood, but a happy life altogether. And the Master is evil, even if he seems to have a capacity to like people. The rating has been raised again as this fic contains some sex, even if it is not very explicit.**

**The title comes from a song by Tom Lehrer called Bright College Days**

"River! Oh River!"

Two young females descended on a third who looked up with an irritated frown from her work at the library table. "What?"

Despite being obviously un-welcomed the girls sat down, talking into each others sentences."Guess what?"

"We have seen the new tutor."

"Your new tutor."

"He's dark."

"And mysterious."

"Sexy."

"Just up your alley!"

"And haughty. He told Headmaster that he only took on the best students."

River started to shuffle her papers and books together. "As if I care, just as long as he is good."

"That's not all. When he left we heard the Dean say that he thought the new tutor seemed rather arrogant but Headmaster said she didn't care as long as that woman didn't chew him up and spat him out as she did with her last tutor."

They laughed rather nastily. "Meaning you River."

River stood up and left, throwing her response over her shoulder. "Well, at least my grades are excellent. Perhaps yours would manage to be mediocre at least, if you would put all that work in finding and passing gossip into your homework instead."


	2. Mid-term

**AN: I had a lot of fun writing this chapter. I think River Song and the Master would clash a bit and the Master would probably have difficulties in not being devious under any circumstances.**

"Well," River Song's tutor said and looked down on the papers on the desk in front of him and frowned.

She looked at him feeling slightly uneasy. After breezing through her education, the past few months she had worked harder than she had ever done before, trying to keep up with the very exacting demands of her tutor. His sharp tongue and a sarcastic wit had put the fear in most of his students, apart from River who appreciated it and felt that she had learned more during this short period than all the years previously. Still, she was used to being able to handle her teachers and she knew perfectly well that she probably had been partly to blame for her former tutor's sudden departure during the winter break. But her true and tried tricks didn't work on the new tutor and she hadn't even dared to flirt with him, which was annoying as she actually found him very attractive. So for the first time she didn't feel sure that her mid-term review would go down without a hitch.

"Academically speaking your work has been nothing short of brilliant. There is room for improvements, of course and I will continue to expect you to do even better for the remaining term." The frown deepened and he looked up at her and River actually had to resist an urge to squirm, he did have very penetrating eyes. "However, then there is this."

He handed her a list and River read it through with rising horror. Everything, absolutely everything she had been up to that she really shouldn't, were on that list. How did he know? She had never bothered to keep to the rules of the university thinking that if she wasn't caught, then it didn't matter. Only now she was and she knew she was in deep trouble.

"How did you find out?"

"I am glad to hear that you are not going to deny any of this. I am very good at finding what I want and your disregard for rules are rather blatant."

"Of course I'm not going to deny it, that would just be silly ." Her eyes narrowed as the first shock of having been found out ebbed away. "But if you know all this, why isn't the Headmaster here and all the rest of the stuffed shirts?"

He chuckled. "You are working under the impression that I am an upstanding member of the school staff. I was rather thinking that we could, perhaps, come to a private arrangement instead."

River began to feel angry. "Oh, blackmail is it? Or my grades will go down the drain."

"Not at all. I will give you excellent grades, just as you deserve. No, what I am saying is that, as a member of this faculty, I have a duty to report such activities and I might just decide that the honour of this venerable university does matter to me." He gestured toward the list in her hand. "You know as well as I that your conduct will at the very least suspend you for the rest of the term and set you back a whole year. At the worst you will be expelled and what grades I will give you won't matter at all."

River crumpled the list and let it fall to the floor. Then she rose, leaned down over the desk and said slowly. "No. Do your worst but I will not succumb to threats. What do you take me for? There are other schools all over the Universe."

She was about to leave, but before she reached for the door handle he spoke.

"Excellent."

"What?" She turned around. He had stood up and was now approaching her, looking irritatingly satisfied.

"I'm very pleased to see that you are the woman of integrity, spirit and independence that I have always considered you to be."

For a moment or two, River was actually speechless. "So this what just some kind of stupid test?"

"Not really. You are a very attractive woman and if you had chosen to take me up on my offer I would certainly not have turned you down. It wouldn't have been quite as satisfying, though, weakness bores me very quickly."

Anger flared up again and she slapped him. His head whipped to the side, but otherwise he didn't react and River raised her hand to slap him again but his arm shot up and he grasped hers in a grip she couldn't break."

"Do not hit me."

She made herself relax. "I won't."

He let go of her and she immediately tried to hit him again. This time she was spun around and suddenly found herself with her back pressed against his chest, with hand covering her mouth. She fought him furiously but couldn't make him budge an inch which only made her angrier. He spoke softly into her ear.

"I said; do not hit me. I'm both stronger and faster than you are and if you hit me again I will make you regret it. Now, if you don't scream and don't try to slap me again I will let you go. If you want to leave, then you are free to go, but I will have you behave or I will turn you over my knee and spank you. It would suit you well for being so naughty. Do you understand?"

River tensed against his body. She could feel her own heart beat in her ears and she could feel his heartbeats as well and there was something not quite right with it. She forced herself to stop struggling and when she succeeded she nodded against his hand. As soon as he let her go she swiveled around so she could face him, backing away from him as she snarled.

"You! You are the Doctor!. You are another version of him and you have come to spy on me! How dare you!" She hadn't felt this angry in a long time, but she also felt bitterly disappointed that she hadn't recognised him. She thought she always would be able to sense him no matter what he looked like.

He held up both his hands to placate her. "I am not him. A Time Lord, yes, but not him."

"It can't be! There are no other ones."

He made a stopping motion with his hand. "Please, don't say anything more. I am not in my natural time-line at the moment and this present is far in my future. I don't want to know."

She breathed heavily, her thoughts scrabbling in several directions at once. Another Time Lord, yes, that made sense and still not, but then, well, Time Lords and time travel. She nodded, curiosity winning over anger.

"I won't say more then, but who are you?"

"You will find out, eventually. At the moment it isn't important."

"Why are you here."

"Oh, you sent me."

"I? Why?"

He looked very smug. "Miss Song, I can't tell how utterly and completely wonderful it is to be the one in the know, for once. I can only say, though, that it was my irresistible charm and your future self's knowledge of what will happen now that prompted you to invite me into your future past."

She arched an eyebrow at him. "Really?"

"Do you doubt it?"

Oddly enough she didn't. "So you consider blackmail a suitable seduction method? Or manhandling me?"

He shrugged and looked completely unrepentant. "I wanted to see how you would react, that's all. And I wouldn't have restrained you if you hadn't attacked me first, although it is a very alluring idea that I would relish in discussing further with you."

"You honestly believe that I want to have sex with a self-satisfied, arrogant man who won't even tell me his real name?"

He smiled and vexed her even further with looking quite charming. "Why, I thought that was exactly your type?"

Annoyingly enough she couldn't deny that "So, what will happen now?"

"That, my dear, is completely up to you."

River looked at him for several long minutes. She considered storming out and slamming the door after her, which would probably be the best thing to do. Instead she went up to her tutor and kissed him, enjoying every second of it. Then she slapped him again. Hard.


	3. The Still Centre

**AN: Many of my stories get a "soundtrack" when I write them, a certain song that I hear in my head. This fic has "Mastermind" by The Divine Comedy, fittingly enough from an album called Regeneration.**

**_So tell me what the hell is normal and who the hell is sane?  
>And why the hell care anyway?<br>All the dreams that we have had are gonna prove that we're all mad and that's OK_**

It was in the early afternoon and the sun slanted through the windows, landing on River who sat curled up in an armchair. She hadn't bothered to find her clothes yet, but was wrapped in a sheet. All in all this had proved to be a very satisfying arrangement; she wriggled her shoulders and enjoyed the lingering glow the afternoon's activities had provided. Her tutor, on the other hand, was not much for lounging around undressed, he always got up and got dressed within minutes, but he hadn't told her to leave yet. He was standing in the window smoking and River watched him. He was smoking cigarillos from Earth and she wondered if he was unaware that they and a number of other small things revealed that he must have spent a lot of time there. He must be, she thought, but if he did it on purpose or just didn't care if she noticed, that she couldn't tell.

She had developed a sense about him, she would always know him now and though he lied easily and affably she was quite sure she could tell when he did so. Perhaps. She had also named him, in the privacy of her mind, but didn't want to ask him if she was right. His neat appearance and polite manners, that was just surface and underneath something else lurked, a raging chaos that his demeanor only thinly veiled. Yes, there was only one man he could be, but she didn't want to know. Not so much an oncoming storm as a furious whirlwind, unpredictable and destructive, but still, somehow she had stepped right into the eye of the tornado were it was calm and safe.

"To that still centre where the spinning world. Sleeps on its axis, to the heart of rest." he suddenly said, making her wonder how much he could pick up from her thoughts. "That's a quote from one of your human authors. It fits; I have found my time here unexpectedly peaceful. Almost silent."

"Why did you come here?"

He turned to look at her. "You already know why; because you asked me."

"No, that's not reason enough. I know I'm gorgeous and terrific in bed, but you," River pointed a finger at him. "You could just walk into a room and snap your finger to get who you wanted."

He quirked an eyebrow at her, but didn't deny it. For a few minutes he just continued smoking and she thought he wasn't going to answer her at all, but eventually he spoke.

"A sense of affinity, I suppose. I don't know why, I ought to hate you because you will get what I can never have, but I think you understand what I feel better than anyone could ever do. How it feels to hate and love someone in equal amounts and at the same time and how it tears you apart. Don't you, River?"

She nodded mutely, suddenly feeling like she was choking on tears. The room fell silent again, but eventually she spoke.

"Will I be happy?"

"You know better than to ask me that," he told her mildly. "But I think you have an extraordinary ability to take your happiness were you find it."

"You think. I don't know if I dare to hope that I can manage even that. I was damaged so badly when I was a child, I don't think I can ever escape it."

"I know. You don't escape it. You just have to shape your life to try to make it bearable."

She looked at him intently, her brown eyes boring into his. "Is that what you do?"

"Yes." He stubbed out his cigarillo and threw it out of the window, before he pulled River up from the armchair, his grip on her arms so hard that she knew it would leave bruises, and kissed her. "No more talking today."

**AN: If you wonder what the Master quoted I can tell you that it comes from one of my favourite books, Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers. Here is the full sonnet:**

**Here, then, at home, by no more storms distrest,**

_**Folding laborious hands we sit, wings furled;**_

_**Here in close perfume lies the rose-leaf curled,**_

_**Here the sun stands and knows not east nor west,**_

_**Here no tide runs; we have come, last and best,**_

_**From the wide zone through dizzying circles hurled,**_

_**To that still centre where the spinning world**_

_**Sleeps on its axis, to the heart of rest.**_

_**Lay on thy whips, O Love, that we upright,**_

_**Poised on the perilous point, in no lax bed**_

_**May sleep, as tension at the verberant core**_

_**Of music sleeps; for, if thou spare to smite,**_

_**Staggering, we stoop, stooping, fall dumb and dead,**_

_**And, dying, so, sleep our sweet sleep no more.**_

**In the book the first verse is written by a young woman who returns to Oxford after having had a rather chaotic life and the second is written by the man who is in love with her.**


	4. The Razorblades of Life

"Nervous of the graduation ceremony?"

"A little. It seems a bit strange that I have managed to get to the end of it."

"You have worked hard for it and the doctorate is well earned."

"Yes, yes, I know." River fidgeted a little, checking the mirror once again to make sure everything was in place, especially the heavy flower garland she wore as an indication to her new status. "You will come?"

"Of course. But I will leave tonight, I have already lingered here much longer than I intended."

"Can I see you before you go? One last time?"

"If you wish."

Despite his words the Master didn't return to his rooms after the ceremony. Instead he went to a shady corner of the university yard, almost invisible in the darkness by the low-hanging branches of a tree. He waited there patiently until he could hear River's voice floating toward him as she bid her friends good night and then he could see her quite clearly as she passed a lamp. She looked happy, almost dancing over the grass, but then she stepped into darkness again and the he heard her cry out as the Church of the Silence descended on her. When the anguished scream was cut short the Master made an involuntary move to come to her aid, but then he shrank back into the shadows instead. He waited until her captors had vanished with River and then he went to the place of the struggle. The flowers she had worn around her head lay scattered on the ground and he picked up one. It was so badly crushed it fell apart in his hand and he stared at the petals for some time. Then he let them fall again and he too went into the darkness and disappeared.

END


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